BELLONA: 2nd Edition

The new edition is here and hey, if you already own BELLONA, there’s nothing new to buy!

                I know, I know, we wargamers are used to hearing the words “new edition” every year or so, and when we do hear it, it usually means a whole new game, rendering the previous edition obsolete. That’s not how I want BELLONA to be. This edition has only a few quality of life tweaks and changes that have arisen out of years of playtesting so you can enjoy the game more. Old additional optional rule sets (like Dungeon Crawling) will still work just fine with this latest edition and, best of all, there aren’t really any big huge rule changes that you’ll have to read up on just to play the game. If I made an oopsie and broke something in an old additional optional rule set and somehow missed it, please let me know, and / or just use the old edition’s not-broken rule to play. The last version of First Edition is still included in the zip file!

 

                Also, I’m not the edition police. This game is designed to be easy to modify, so you can play it however you want with whatever edition-specific rule variants you want as long as everyone at the table agrees to it. Fun is the priority here.

                 So what’s changed? Perhaps the biggest change between First Edition and Second Edition is the expanded Level 3 Content. Level 3.1: One Use Items brings sorely missed mechanics like grenades and speed boosters into the game, instead of relying exclusively on modifiers like Sweep and Fast. One use items give powerful bonuses to units, but these bonuses can only be used once per battle, so use them wisely. Now, you’ll have to make the decision about whether to take Fast and give your unit six extra inches of movement or, for the same price, take a one-use item that gives your unit twelve extra inches of movement. Both have their tactical advantages.

 

                Level 3.2: Negative Modifiers was actually cut material originally meant for the First Edition. I held them back because I hadn’t worked out all of the issues with them yet and I had to test them extensively while working on the upcoming TOP SECRET DUNGEON CRAWLING CONTENT. These modifiers allow you to hyper-focus your units by hampering them in one way so you can increase their abilities in another. They also open up the potential for status attacks!

 

                New Level 2 and Level 3 Modifiers were added as well, including Ablative, Anchor, Bloat, Camouflage, Chaff, Conjure, Counter, Dead Zone, Echo, Magnetize, Mirror, Parasite, Pummel, Railcannon, Salve, Sentinel, Snare, Snap, Thief, Tracker, Transformation, Venom and Weaver. These fell out of the post-launch play and playtesting for BELLONA (especially the optional rule sets) over the past several years.

 

Level 4 Legendary Modifiers were also fleshed out more, with Beacon, Dread Engine, Gravity Pulse, Omen, Rift Walk and Singularity being added to the mix. Aura was adjusted to have a 3" effect, as 1" was too little for a 5 point modifier. Grav Shield had a slight wording alteration as well, simplifying it and making room for resisting things like grenades.

 

Nullify was also nerfed at the request of several players who stated that it was too powerful as it was worded. Instead of affecting all modifiers on a single unit, Nullify now only affects all instances of a single modifier on a single unit. This means if a unit has Tough x3 and Fast x1, you can use Nullify to temporarily negate all Tough or all Fast modifiers on that unit. You can, of course, ignore this change and go with the pre-nerf version of the rule if all players at the table agree. Nullify is one of those tricky ones that, in its First Edition form, could be used to min-max a force capable of completely disabling a “boss” unit that has a ton of points piled on it. Now, it just kind of disables one facet of a unit that your opponent is maybe leaning too heavily into. Also, word to the wise, if you make a bunch of 3 point units with Fast and Nullify, that’s cheese city. Just saying.

 

Conversely, Plated was un-nerfed and changed to prevent damage instead of destruction, as at higher point level builds, it was inferior to just taking another point of Tough. At Tough x3 and buffed with Advantage or Inspiring, it’s suddenly worth the point value, so I opened it up and gave it a simple limiter.

 

The Tough modifier has also had a minor revision. Instead of being limited to only 3, it has been opened up to unlimited use, like Piercing and Ranged. Sweep and Fast were kept at the 3 point limit to minimize abuse. Fast x4 units could be anywhere on the board at any time and Sweep x10 units basically wade into swarms and flatten them. Limits imposed or removed by individual optional rule sets still apply in those rule sets.

 

Level 6 rules have been slightly tweaked. Healing Terrain now offers Salve instead of just healing units.

Level 7 rules (Curses and Blessings) were reorganized, clarified and made more flexible. Both Pop-Up and Bolster were added, but Steady Calm was removed (rendered irrelevant by Bolster) The biggest change here was making Level 7's token system more versatile. If you (and your opponent) like the guardrails imposed by the old system better, feel free to use those instead.

The Adaptive campaign-specific modifier was also added.

A section on Battle Etiquette was added for the sake of completeness, but I’m not your mom, so I’m not going to tell you that you have to read it.

Fixed typos and clarifications on corner cases were also part of this update. There weren’t many of these, and most of them were linguistic relics from a time when core BELLONA was more crunchy and used the full range of polyhedral dice instead of just the dice you stole from your mom’s old board games. Also rules for non-flying units crossing terrain were tweaked a little. Just climb up those walls and hop over the other side!

 

Also launching alongside 2nd Edition is an optional rule set for Derelict Crawls. As always, it's free if you own the full game. Get your team of plucky soldiers together, clean out and fix up some derelict starships, then fly them back to the nearest starbase for the shipbreakers to cut up. Are you a bad enough dude to put a crew on the ready line, clear out every alien infestation, every pirate nest and every salvager crew that gets put in your path? You better be, because meat is cheap. It’s the starships floating out there in the void that are expensive. Get some!

As a final note, moving forward, I’m only going to be modifying the zip file for the game when there’s a reasonably huge update (like this new edition.) What I’ve uploaded as Second Edition is a complete game with a lot of fun bonus content, so it doesn’t need to be modified. 

New content will still come out (if there’s interest) but new optional rule packs will be posted on my gaming blog (Fistful of Valkyries) as individual posts instead, as they become available. I’ll still post updates over on Itch to let you know there’s new content at the blog, but the content itself will be posted here on this blog. I’ll try to make the content available in PDF form with a link in each post as well. I think I’ve got a solid hosting solution. Fingers crossed!

As always, you can pick up your copy of BELLONA through this link!